How should Asia Petroleum develop its talent management strategy to gain a competitive

advantage, during a phase when competition is intense and employee retention remains top
agenda of the industry?

SYED ALI ARSHAD

Student ID: 06055211

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of

London Metropolitan University for the degree of
Masters In Business Administration (General)

Supervised by Mr. Simon Jones

London Metropolitan University

SEPTEMBER 2008

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW

MAKING YOUR FIRM A TALENT POWERED ORGANIZATION

CHAPTER 3
ATTRATCTION STRATEGY

CHAPTER 4
RETENTION STRATEGY

CHAPTER 5
DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

CHAPTER 6
DEPLOYMENT STRATEGY
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CHAPTER 7
RESEARCH AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

CHAPTER 8
METHODOLOGY

CHAPTER 9
FINDINGS

CHAPTER 10
ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

CHAPTER 11
RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all I would like to thank London Metropolitan University and the honourable professors
and lecturers of London Metropolitan Business School for their knowledge, dedication and time
and in accomplishment of successful completion of this dissertation. I would also like to thank
my supervisor Simon Jones for his guidance, constructive comments and enormous support
which kept me motivated throughout this dissertation.
My thanks to our course leader Nick Scott for his availability and guidance in successful
completion of this course.

Syed Ali Arshad

London September 2008

CHAPTER 1

1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter explains the context of research topic for this MBA dissertation. We begin with
explaining the background as to why this subject is relevant and interesting for our research.
Secondly the area of investigation is narrowed down to the problem and finally to the specific
purpose of the dissertation.

1.1 Introduction to the Research Project

This research project is based on Asia Petroleum Limited Karachi Pakistan. The purpose of the
study is to explore the talent management practices as perceived by the management executives
and employees of organization using a case study design. The study also evaluates the extent to
which the perceived talent management strategies and practices supports the organization in
maintaining competitive advantage by ensuring that the organization attracts, retains, motivates
and develops the talent pool as its strategic asset.

1.2 Background

Take my assets, leave my people, and in five years Ill have it all back
Alfred Sloan General Motors
Gone are the days when capital (money) and physical resources like equipment and plant were
considered to be most valuable institutional assets. In the 21 st century a corporations most
important strategic assets are its talent (people). These views were expressed by chief executive
of New Paradigm Mr. Tapscott in a foreword of the book The Talent Powered organization.
Advocating talent as key asset Mr. Tapscott asserts that The only meaningful assets are
knowledge assets and the only meaningful form of capital is intellectual capital. Citigroup chief
executive Walter Wriston expressed this as Information about money has become almost as
important as money itself (cited in Cheese 2008).
The above statements are the reflection of the mindset and thinking todays most successful
business entrepreneurs. The Brookings institution in Washington reports that intangible assets
such as brands, worker skills, organizational processes, customer relationships can be worth up
two third of the marketplace value of the companies. These intangible assets are created by
human resources from the work force. Human genius is the key element which differentiates the
products, services and customer attraction among the competitors. The importance of human
resources gets even more apparent when taking into consideration todays fast changing business
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environment and the increasing demand of a skilled workforce with valuable competencies and
expertise. Getting the right people for the right job is the most difficult job Human Resources
managers are dealing with. The increase in competition, free market economies, open door
policies of the country for inviting local and foreign investors, WTO policies and development of
emerging markets are among some of the factor building pressures in a already stressed job
market for the recruiters. Asian domestic job market is shrinking due to migration of workforce
to overseas. Also jobs which are not confined to particular location have the potential to be
performed anywhere in the world. Call centers are good example of location free job
assignments (Cheese 2008). Pakistan and India has now employed thousands of people in call
centers which inturn has increased the difficulties of local firms to get people with good
communication skills and proficiency in English. Organizational boundaries have become porous
due to human capital networking. Also the transactional and collaboration cost has drastically
decreased due to the availability of new information technology tools and internet. Today people
are networked together via face book and other electronic network community sites. Companies
are tapping into huge pools of talent outside their boundaries. It is now common that you see
people working for overseas firms in your neighborhood. Most advanced firms realize that not
all innovation can flourish within the company and much will develop beyond their reach, an
example of that is virtual studios where talented people have developed visual effects that are
now being used in Hollywood.
Resource-based theorists argue that human assets can be a source of sustainable advantage
because tacit knowledge and social complexity are hard to imitate. (Lawler, 2008) argues that
competitive advantage of firms relies on intangible assets mainly knowledge. Therefore in this
new context traditional model of recruiting, managing and retaining employees has become
7

outdated. Talent management is the new paradigm for strategic competitive advantage (Cheese,
2008).
According to U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast there will be a shortfall of 10 to 16 million
workers between years 2015 and 2025 in USA. This is due to far below growth of labour pool in
comparison to job market expansion. Furthermore there will be a decrease of 15% in number of
people between the ages of 35 and 44 and the average age of worker will be well over 40 years
by the year 2010. Moreover Baby Boomers (workers born between 1946 1964) which forms a
majority of current workforce will be at alarming level. Therefore Human resources management
should be well prepared for the upcoming challenges and position themselves in the eyes of
current and perspective employees as well as shareholders. (Brown, Williams 2008).
In a recent article Managing Demographic Risk by (Strack, Baier & Fahlander 2008) the author
agues that graying population of baby boomers generation and a declining birth rate has
increased risk of talent shortages around the globe. A large number of baby boomers will be
approaching retirement age thus taking away critical knowledge and skills with them. Older
employees may become less productive. This demographic risk if not addressed properly and
prioritized highly may lead to acute talent scarcity in the business organizations (Strack, Baier &
Fahlander 2008).
Recent review of management and human resources literature shows that the issue of human
capital the top agenda and getting attention of the management consultants in view of the
demand supply short fall of human resources and the trend towards capitalizing on the talent of
workforce to maintain its competitive advantage. The authors of the book Human Resources in
the 21st century argue that people are an organizations most valuable assets and the only source
of lasting competitive advantage for business. Most of business things can be duplicated
8

including products, services and infrastructure except the people a firm retains (Effron,
Gandossy, Goldsmith, 2008).
The demographic issue has been raised by several scholars and highlighted in articles for
example in one recent article on this subject, The Icarus Syndrome Talent Management and
Derailment in the New Millennium the author argues that Worlds socio-demographic factors
like alarming level of baby boomers, workers migration due to economic reasons, changing
workplace practices, increased demand in work life balance has made todays HR management
more complicated. Organizations are in want of high flyers, talented, able, motivated and
creative people. There is significant reduction in the number of young people and thus available
young talent due to ongoing Change in demographic profile of may western countries. Young
managers often change their career too fast and keep their association with their firm as long as
the want to keep it. Mobility and market forces attract youngsters towards organizations which
match their reward, culture and pace. Thus organizations have to fight for small number of
available human resources termed as war for talent in most of the talent management literature
(Furnham, A 2008).
Peter cheese in his book talent powered organization argues that Present world workforce lives
in a world networked by sophisticated electronic web based social networks. They understand
their value to their employer and are not inherently loyal employees. They are likely to only
work for a firm as long as the work remains stimulating in an unrestricted Free Agent market, as
we now have in everyday business, organizations will be facing a revolving door with their very
best talent (Cheese 2008, p15).
The above scenario mostly relates to period when economy was making progress. However after
the pitfall of the economy due to credit crunch there are predictions of job losses and redundancy
of the work force. The organizations may have to revise their strategies in economic down turn.
Richard Doherty, VP Operations (UK) at Jobpartners argues that credit crunch tends to decrease
consumer spending and thus there can be a decrease in profit margins of the business especially
retails business. Therefore many may have to cut down their operational cost and revise budgets,
which may lead to closing down or reducing work force in some of the departments. Therefore
9

while recruiting and making redundancy plans organizations may have to filter out poor
performers and hire only the best talent to maintain margins. This demands more need for a
strategic talent management process in organizations to maintain competitive advantage.
A review of the current business models in the financial and capital markets shows trend shift
from asset based business model towards knowledge-based business model. There is an
exponential growth in the value of investment in intellectual capital.
Summing up the debate, we can visualize that all these factors explained above represents a very
high impact on todays business, especially when performance and competitive advantage of the
business is tied to a businesses acquiring and retaining talent their main asset which is scarce and
a fluid commodity nowadays. The new methods of linking human capital in the balance sheets of
the company and the human differential which has an impact on firms present market value
shows that organization is directly tied to its ability to create new products and services and
markets for those products and services. Therefore, the financial future of the organization is
dependent on the strategy it deploys concerning talent. Looking forward we can visualize that
talent management will determine future success or failure of organizations.

1.3 Talent Management a Business Problem

People are the foundation stones of an organization. The talent held by organization in form of its
workforce processes the raw material into finished products and deliver the product with service
excellence to the customer in most efficient manner earning customer satisfaction. The tangible
assets including investment, plant, machinery and building are all part of the elements required
shaping the finished product but the value creation of the product mostly rely on human input.
Literature review on human capital management strongly advocates human capital value. For
instance the author of the book Hiring and Keeping The Best quotes The success of most of
todays businesses depends more on human assets than on physical or financial assets. Buildings,
equipment, manufacturing facilities, and most technologies can be readily purchased, but the
human talent and know-how needed to drive our knowledge-based industries are much harder to
10

come by. Effective hiring and personnel retention are the two bases of future organizational wellbeing (Luecke R, 2002 pg 12). The above shows a glimpse of the incredible value of human
talent or workforce of an organization. We will be covering more on the importance and concepts
of talent as intangible assets in Literature Review section. We have now established a ground for
making workforce mainstream of creating value to the product and services offered by firms, we
will now move to key challenges faced by organizations in context of workforce.
Organizations today are facing challenges on several fronts in their efforts to remain
competitive (Burke & Cooper, 2006, P-13).Some of the key challenges faced by todays
organizations are employee retention, workforce scarcity, and high turnover of workforce, higher
recruitment cost, and succession planning and organization capacity.

Figure 1: Demand, supply and context factors for talent management

Source: CIPD survey 2008

CIPD survey 2008 on employee retention shows that one of the key challenges organizations
facing today is employee retention (CIPD survey 2008). Employee retention is identified as
strategic business issue. The author of book Hiring and Keeping the Best advocates that
retention of employee pertains to customer satisfaction a major goal of business strategy for
11

survival and growth of organization. This correlation is supported by major researchers in the
field of customer satisfaction. In authors own words Employees who are satisfied with their
work and their company are more likely to create satisfied customers ((Luecke, 2002, p-62)
This statement is also supported by the evidence from a study on sears stores in USA where a
survey of more than 800 stores and several hundred employees authenticated the correlation that
negative employee attitudes and behaviors adversely affects the satisfaction of Sears customers.
Furthermore high employee turnover reduces customer satisfaction and store revenues. It also
concluded that understanding companys strategic objectives had a direct bearing on employees
attitudes and behaviors (Luecke, 2002).

CHAPTER 2

12

2. Literature Review

The literature review will start with the definition of talent and talent management, moving
towards the process perspective which is main focus of our thesis i.e attraction, retention,
development and deployment of talent in organization. We will cover the strategic importance of
human capital management and how it is different from human resource management. Finally we
will discuss some challenges in managing talent in the organizations.
2.1 Defining

The terms Talent and Talent Management appears widely in business management and human
resources management literature. However we were unable to find a universally accepted
definition of these terms agreed and accepted by management science researchers and scholars.
To emphasize our point we will reserve some paragraphs in giving definitions from vide variety
of literature.
Accenture defines high-performance talent management as planning and execution of an
integrated set of management processes that drive business value by creating and continuously
optimizing workforce talent. The author argues that their words reflect attitudes. They say that
resources can be depleted and capital is an economic abstraction. Talent is rare therefore the
term talent carries value (Beacham S, Mindrum C, 2008).

Lewis and Hackman in their talent management review argues that the terms talent
management, talent strategy, succession management, and human resource planning are
often used interchangeably in the literature which creates confusion. They stress that researchers
can contribute to remove ambiguity by developing a consistent definition of talent management

13

and add coherence by putting talent management objectives in strategic framework which can
lead organization in achieving their goals.

Consulting firms and reputable institutions also developed their own definitions of talent
management. Presented below is a definition from Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Development (CIPD).

CIPD research defines this widely use term talent as organizationally specific and highly
influenced by the type of industry to which it is applied and dynamic in nature according to
organizational priorities. For example for health sector talent may be an expert surgeon and for
the local council it may be a successful administrator.
By now we have discussed some definitions. We will now look into how Talent Management
term evolved in the Business and Management World.
Talent management is a new paradigm for management of organizational workforce referred as
talent under this concept and a perspective of looking at workforce (human capital) as a strategic
valuable asset rather than treating it as a cost center. This concept originated in an article War
for talent by Mckinsey in 1997. The article highlighted the difficulties faced by organizations in
attracting and retaining talented people. The author of the book Hiring and keeping the best
argues that the war for acquisition of talent was at its maximum during 1992 -2000. U.S
business enjoyed tremendous economic prosperity during this period and unemployment was
lowest for able persons in this period. The demand for highly skilled workers in the areas such
as IT, software development, electrical engineering, accounting, and finance surpassed the supply
resources and thus the phrase war for talent picked up popularity in the business and industry.
The companies made special efforts to retain their people to such an extent that one of the firm
Ernst & Young established an office exclusively to deal with issue of retention involving direct
reporting responsibility to the CEO. Special Incentives were offered to workforce in that period
to alleviate stress such as work-life balance programs, casual dress regimens and on-site child
care. Some companies relaxed office decorum to such an extent that they even allowed
14

employees to bring their dogs to work. Books on the subjects like how to keep your employees
happy and productive and scores of other related books had tremendous sales during this period.
(Luecke R, 2002)

Talent management is coherent process and an umbrella covering attraction, retention,

motivation and engagement, development and succession planning of the entire workforce of the
organization. The process involves coordination and mutually support approaches from entire
organization departments in an effort to get and keep the talented people the main asset of the
organization for competitive advantage. It focuses on employer branding as the best place to
work the slogan of predominant now 21st century workforce. (Armstrong M, 2006).

Some authors and researchers described talent as potential or intellectual capital retained by
workforce or employees of the organization. This potential or intellectual capital differentiates
the book value of the firm to the market value of the firm. Some times these people of the
organization has been referred to as clever people by Goffee and Jones in an article leading the
clever people in Harvard business review. The authors argue that these clever people are difficult
to handle and a different set of management capabilities are required to deal with intellects of the
organization. Creativity of these people can get killed and you may loose talent if not dealt with
properly. Applying creative-nurturing practices and balancing coordination and control will help
employees broaden their expertise. Motivating these employees by allocating sufficient resources
will enhance creativity of the talent in your organization.

(Lewis and Hackman, 2006) in a critical review of talent management views talent as valuable,
rare and hard to imitate. However they argue talent is ambiguously defined in talent management
literature and the clear precise definition of talent has yet to be agreed upon by researchers. In
their own words It is difficult to identify the precise meaning of talent management because of
the confusion regarding definitions and terms and the many assumptions made by authors who
15

write about TM. ((Lewis and Hackman, 2006, pg 134). (Michaels et al, 2001, p.11) on the other
hand claims that talent management is not improved hr process but its about a different mindset

(Cheese, 2008) argues that talent powered organization invests in building distinctive capabilities
in managing talent to produce extra ordinary results for the organization. These organizations has
processes in place for developing individual and collective talents, discovering sources of talents
with and outside the firm, engage people (talent) and aligning them with objectives and goals of
the firm. Thus talent management process is set of activities organizations adapt go gain
continuous competitive advantage.

(Burk & Cooper,2004) argues that The world of work and organization has become increasing
demanding and turbulent. (Cheese, 2008) further extends this outlook by adding that divergence
of intangible sources to gain competitive advantage is customary in the age of 21 st century.
Explaining this concept cheese argue that it is less valuable to own a piece of land, buy
machinery or own capital assets in new economic world. The knowledge retained by employees
to obtain most efficient way of producing goods and services and launching them into market
more successfully enhances the capability of the firm to earn more value thus adding profitability
and increasing market value of the firm.

(Duttagupta R, 2005) defines that talent management is the strategic flow of talent through an
organization assuring that right people are hired for right job at the right time and right place and
aligning the people with business objectives. She further adds that talent management is a lot
more than yet another HR process. According to her it is a mindset which goes beyond the
rhetoric towards a holistic and integrated approach leveraging the greatest competitive advantage
from people. If talent management process is applied and successfully implemented for a
sufficient duration of time it can become culture of the organization.

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Talent Management: The Special Challenges of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Most of the literature review on talent management has been written with the larger firms
perspective. However talent management is about mindset and values about attracting and
retaining talent in an organization. We will now discuss some constraints in applying talent
management practices in small medium enterprises.
Small firm lack of economies of scale and, therefore can not afford to hire specialist
professionals to look after effective talent management practice. Larger firms have managers and
executives for most of the departments and have a structured hierarchical level of command. Hey
can afford to retain specialist professional for longer period of time and have budgets available
for employee development, training and monitoring process.
The lack of support services or their relatively higher unit cost can hamper SME efforts to
improve their management because consulting firms often are not equipped with appropriate cost
effective management solutions for the scale of SMEs. Furthermore, the scarce awareness,
absence of information and/or time to take advantage of existing services results in weak demand
for them.

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3. Making your firm A Talent Powered Organization

The main focus of talent management revolves around four main constituents
Attraction Strategies
Retention Strategies
Development Strategies
Deployment Strategies

We will now discuss in detail each of above in context of best practices adopted by organizations
and ground theory supporting their strategy in the next chapters.

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CHAPTER 3

Attraction and Recruitment Strategy

Selecting and Hiring Right People for the Right job
If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.
But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of
giants.
David Ogilvy
Hiring decisions are among the most important decisions made by managers. Good hiring
decisions create a foundation for more effective performance by employees, teams, and the
company overall. Conversely, bad hiring decisions drag down performance and are painfully
expensive to correct. Without the right people in the right positions, neither a company nor its
individual units can turn in exceptional performance. A mis-hire can cost exorbitantly high on
organizations finance and can ruin the whole team spirit. Bradford Smith an experienced
consultant of this field has estimated from his study of fifty-four U.S. companies that the average
managerial mis-hire costs a company twenty-four times the individuals base compensation
(Smith B, 1999).

The first and foremost step in making a talent powered organization is attraction and recruitment
of people who best suit organization culture and fit. So what characteristics and attributes we
should look for when selecting workforce. The author of article Getting extraordinary results
from ordinary people presents a good example, she says that extraordinary results are not solely
domain of people with extraordinary education or experience; any ordinary person can deliver
19

extraordinary results. 3m product post-it stick-on is a brilliant example in this regard where the
inventor turned a rejected product into a useful product by making useful application of the
product the post-it notes. It is common practice of one person to impact many. What Southwest
Airlines and Yahoo looks for when selecting workforce is attitude, energy, passion, curiosity,
compassion and independence since these characteristics can not be built from scratch. Persons
having these distinctive attributes can be influenced, promoted, cultivated and developed and
harnessed into excellent highflyers (Sartain, L., 2003). Finding the right person for the right job
require a number of considerations. Start looking and considering current employees for the
present requirement because current employees may match your requirement specification for
the position. Secondly since they are already in the organization they understand the culture
therefore current employees can be potential candidates for the job. If you desire to bring in new
outlooks prefer looking outside your organization. Keeping in view organization fit when
screening candidates. Past job performance can predict future performance so look for candidates
past job record. Candidates having compatible personality along with right education and right
experience may prove a good fit for the organization. Dont be influenced by just like me trap
that is looking for candidates with similar education backgrounds, age, race, gender and hobbies
always focus on objectives of job requirements and candidates qualification (Mornell P. 1998).

After defining the key ingredients of what to look for when hiring the right person for the right
job, we will proceed to next steps involved in the recruitment process. There are a number of
channels available many today for recruitment. These start from traditional recruitment
procedure of job advertisement to online recruitment portals to headhunters or recruitment
specialist agencies. Another path is outsourcing an entire function or process of the firm. Job
advertisement and hiring and recruitment by firm itself can take long duration due to the process
of the firm. If the steps and numerous and decision making is centralized it can take long enough
to get the people in the firm. Look at the present process and revolutionize it to match the firms
need and time constraints. Acquiring services of headhunter comes at a price. The benefits of
hiring a consultant save time and justify the money if they are competent. Furthermore these
consultants have active networks of key people in the industries they serve and can get the word
out quickly and confidentially to qualified people. They also screen respondents so that only
20

qualified candidates are presented for evaluation. Beside these steps employer branding plays a
key role in attraction of talent in the organization. The best way to do this is to state the core
values and expectations in the relevant media and job interview and among company employees
since they are the best promoters of the stimulating environment of the firm they are engaged
with. A Word of mouth is a powerful tool of spreading the brand image of the company through
its customers and employees who can refer qualified friends and relatives to bring them to the
door steps of the company. Cisco systems make friends is a good example of such techniques
adopted by the firm for its successful attraction of people. This will not only address outside
prospects but also reinforces internal messages. (Deloitte 2005)

A literature review on attracting people suggests that pay is one of the most attractive component
of attracting talent in your organization. (Capelli 1999) agues that most commonly advice offered
by literature in attraction of talent and workforce is to pay and treat talented people well.
Citigroup can be referred as recent organization which believes in pay value and introduced a
new compensation package to possibly reduce mass departure of talent from its organization.
Conversely (Challenger, Gray and Christmas, 1999) states that this may not be true in other parts
of the world where pay does not have a strong effect on employee attraction or retention and it
has a low priority on reasons for leaving an organization for some executives or managers (cited
in Hiltrop J. 1999). Further expanding the debate Pfeffer argues pay is a most costly and fungible
item since there is no end to competing with the market in pay offering and keeping talent in
your organization. Other than pay what managers more often look for is the corporate pride and
trust in the chief executives ability to take decisions.
The attraction policies and programmes describe approach to ensuring that organization gets the
talent it needs. Attraction polices are targeted towards external resourcing that is recruitment and
selection of people from outside the organization. Once the talent is inside the organization we
need to draft policies and programmes for their engagement and retention. The aim of retention
strategy shall be that workforce stays with organization ensuring that we maintain a talent flow
that replenishes talent pool.
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CHAPTER 5
Development Strategies

The key to organizational growth is strongly linked with people

development. Business needs new ideas, new technologies and new
methods of models of production and process to be competitive and
attractive to the customers. In this chapter we will be dealing with human
capital development, organization development, knowledge sharing and
defining a systematic approach towards building a modern organization.
We will start by looking into definitions to understand what is meant by
people development and stepping towards organization development.

Definition
Hall (1984) defined strategic human resources development as The identification of needed
skills and active management of learning for the long range future in relation to explicit
corporate and business strategy (cited in Armstrong 2006, P 533)
Walton (1994) described human resource development as:
Strategic human resource development involves introducing, eliminating, modifying, directing
and guiding processes in such a way that all individuals and teams are equipped with the skills,
knowledge and competencies they require to undertake current and future tasks required by the
organization. (cited in Armstrong 2006, P533)
CIPD (2001) defined learning and development process as follows:
The organizational process of developing people involves the integration of learning and
development processes, operations and relationships. Its most powerful outcomes for the
business are to do with enhanced organizational effectiveness and sustainability. For the
22

individual they are to do with enhanced personal competence, adaptability and employability. It
is therefore a critical business process in for-profit or not-for-profit organizations.
Employee development is a very effective succession planning tool and an important strategic
business aim because it is like investing in building a talent pool. It is an essential element of
workforce supply chain for meeting the present and future workforce requirement of the
business. The key benefits of workforce development includes; helps build a reservoir of
developed and skilled and trained workforce to fill in present and future open positions and
vacancies, increases the value of the firms human assets which is intellectual capital for
competitive advantage and according to research now account for two third of the market value
of the company for some industries. Creates a pool of individuals who understand the company
and the industry, and who are prepared to take responsibility as future leaders of the enterprise
and lastly contributes to effective retention of the organization. (Hiring and keeping the best
people - Harvard business press 2006)

Research provides enough evidence that employee development and succession planning was not
traditionally on the top agenda of corporations board of directors and was left much to the
attention of CEOs and human resource directors. Lack of employee development was not
considered as a threat or risk that company perceives as essential as keeping the books of account
upto date or update financial reports and keeping an eye upon financial blunders and missed
opportunities. (Cohn M.J, Khurana R and Reeves Laura) Growing talent as if your business
depends on it Harvard business review on Talent Management 2008

Succession planning and leadership development are integral part of talent management process.
Companies ignoring or not keeping workforce leadership and development program on the
priority list experience a constant decrease in their talent pool and employee retention and fall
victim to organization growth. Moreover if organizational development is not primary focus of
company executives than it can make wrong decisions like promoting untested and undeveloped
employees to senior positions and may look for senior executives outside their company which is
23

a strategic disadvantage of not having organizationally fit and difficult to adjust persons for the
executive jobs and by the time they learn the culture of the company it is too late. (Cohn M.J,
Khurana R and Reeves Laura) Growing talent as if your business depends on it Harvard
business review on Talent Management 2008.
Firms who have embedded succession planning and employee development in their business
strategy not only enjoy the benefits of their investment but also gain success in aligning their
leadership and development processes their strategic priorities.

The strategic aims and objectives for human resource development process according to Harrison
(2005) involve development of a learning culture with continuous improvement. Developing the
competence of managers to participate actively in knowledge creation and expand learning
capacity throughout the organization and focusing not only the key personnel but also the
knowledge workers of the organization. Further to strategic aims and objects for learning and
development process the essential development steps includes agreement on formation of
strategy-making team, clarification of organization mission, exploring the core values and
identification of challenges faced by the organization and lastly agreeing on overall strategy and
strategic plan for human resource development.

The development of human resources is also connected with how the learning takes place in the
organization and how organizations become learning organization. Easterby-Smith and Araujo
defined organizational learning as an efficient procedure to process, interpret and respond to
both internal and external information of predominantly explicit nature. Organizational learning
helps to accelerate development of a firms resources-based capability and hence raises firms
intellectual capital raising its stock of knowledge and skills. Organizational learning process
consists of three stages knowledge acquisition, dissemination and shared implementation (Dale
1994 cited in Armstrong M, 2006). Argyris (1992) on the other hand proposes that organizational
learning takes place when an organization achieves what it intended and secondly when the
24

mismatch between intensions and outcomes is identified and corrected (cited in Armstrong M
2006).

After discussing how learning takes place in organization we now come to the concept of
learning organization. This is fairly a new concept and was introduced by Senge (1990) who
describes that a learning organization is that where people continually expand their capacity to
create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured,
where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn
together (cited in Armstrong M 2006).

Senge (1990) proposes that learning organization focuses on collective problem solving using
team learning and a soft system whereby all the possible causes of problem are considered in
order to define more clearly those which can be dealt with those which are insoluble. On the
other hand some researchers believe that the greatest challenge for a learning organization is
knowing what it knows. That is knowledge management of formal and informal knowledge the
organization uses to create value. Furthermore information shall be made instantly accessible to
all its users and creators, and subject to challenge, test and enhancement. Moreover learning and
development is a great way to engage people (cited in Cheese 2008).

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Chapter 4
Retention strategies
Employee retention remains most challenging issue for organizations. CIPD annual survey
report 2007 reveals that retention difficulties of employers have climbed from 69% previously to
78% this year. Private sector businesses being most effected claims (83%) retention difficulties
reports the survey. In this chapter we will focus on strategies for keeping the good people you
already have.
Studies show that employees exit from organization has multiple magnitudes on business
effectiveness; some of which are productivity, profitability, service quality, loss of valuable skills
held by employees and corporate memory. Moreover replacement cost, training and
developing cost, loss of productive time, time taken by new employee to adjust in organization
are all associated as consequence.

26

Growing body of researchers has linked business profitability with employee retention. This
argument is strongly advocated in service profit chain theory published in Harvard Business
Review. Service profit chain theory argues that customer relationship management is strongly
linked to employee retention. This theory asserts that satisfied employees tend to achieve
customer satisfaction by service excellence and thus gain customer loyalty which in-turn
increases business growth and profitability (Haskett J.L et al, 1994).

Research have identified some most common factors causing employees to leave the
organization are; Shift in leadership i.e decision making skill of managers to address problematic
issues on time, trust on leadership, loyalty with new boss, conflict with immediate supervisors,
close friends leaving organization, affiliation with colleagues, job no more attractive, burnout
and change in responsibilities are all linked exit of employees from organization (Luecke R,
2002). On the other hand Boxall et al (2003) found that age, tenure, overall satisfaction, job
content, intentions are to remain on the job, and commitment were consistently linked to
negatively to employee turnover.
Retention strategies are successful if they take into account realities as they exist. This point is
addressed by Cappelli (2000) who argues that the market, not the company will ultimately
determine the movement of employees. Cappelli stresses that it is not possible for organization
to counter market pull forces all the time. He further argues that you cant shield your people
from attractive opportunities and aggressive recruiters. In other words if firms are attracting
employees by offering greater compensation in terms of pay, then for some organizations it may
not be feasible to join the race. Instead organization can base their strategy on alternatives and
build competitive advantage by strengthening what other values they have, which they can offer
more flexibly, like better work environment, work life balance, organizational culture and
employer brand. (Cited in Armstrong 2006)

Retention strategies should be customized according to targets. Consider career advancement and
development is more important for young people than other perks. Middle aged people seek
27

career advancement and job satisfaction to go along with the firm. For older aged persons job
security and stability is more important than any other thing.
Businesss can prepare risk analysis by identifying potential risk assessment as to which jobs are
critical to their organization foreseeing people who may leave and prepare contingency plan to
eliminate likelihood of this occurring, calculate risk and devise appropriate solution with cost
effectiveness. Scaling the risk points from low to high will help in deciding action to be taken
according to the degree of the risk. (Armstrong 2006)
Exit interviews, opinion surveys to identify areas of dissatisfaction are useful in preparation of
retention planning. However researchers argue that exit interview may not reflect true opinion of
leavers therefore not authentic source for viable information. Conclusion of key jobs risk
analysis and overall assessment of reasons for leaving may provide some guidelines for possible
recommendations which are summarized as under:
Pay should be competitive according to market as far as possible. Avoid unfair pay system
because in hard times people can reluctantly accept low pays, but as soon as things get better
they tend to move. How ever as discussed above there is an extent to which employer can stretch
on market based wages. Therefore employers can attract people by improving organizational
image, workplace hygiene, work life balance and other things that get people to stay.
Job design plays an important role in getting people engagement. Jobs can be made more
interesting by adding variety to a repetitive job, engaging isolated employees occasionally in
team projects, leveraging skills by offering challenging jobs. Some Jobs involve more than one
repugnant tasks, in this case consider eliminating or outsourcing one which you can easily
outsource an example is of UPS where they felt that drivers are overload with work as they have
to fill the parcels which decreases their energy level and since they are front line staff facing
customers, UPS hired students for placing the parcel in their vehicles which released burden on
driver thus increased their efficiency and gaining customer satisfaction by satisfying employees.
Diversity is very important. As far as possible fit job around the people, and not people around
the job.

28

Buying peoples loyalty by is next to impossible. Money does not work always. Peter Cappelli
describes social ties, as another strategy that can be used to improve the retention of valued
employees in tight talent markets. As he write Loyalty to companies may be disappearing, but
loyalty to colleagues is not (cited in Armtrong 2000, P399). People love to stay with the
organization if their work experience is what they expect it to be and firms values and attributes
match their perception (Tamara J. Erickson and Lynda Gratton).
Take special care in selection and promotion of people to match their skills and capabilities with
the job they are going to be hired for. As Leary-Joyce (2004) says Recruit for attitude, induct for
culture. A mismatch can lead to a quick exit of an employee. Research shows that poor selection
results in high turnover. Induction training plays a key role in developing skills required by the
job. Training and support improves job adjustment.
Stress at work can be reduced by maintain work life balance. Designing policies and considering
needs outside the job, like flexible working hours or introducing some facilities for entertainment
and relaxation around work place reduces work stress.

29

CHAPTER 6
Deploying Strategy

People deployment is a very strategic issue in global business. The ability of organization to
deploy right people at the right job on right location and right time is gaining attention of global
firm executives. Organizations having well placed people development programs and talent
management process often complaint that they struggle filling key positions around the globe
which put constraints on business growth. Effective deployment strategies can provide solution
to these problems.
Having right people at the right job improves business growth especially developing business in
new regions, moving into new markets. Deployment of persons with potential skill to take
advantage of arriving opportunities is competitive advantage in such situations. (Douglas A.
Ready D. A & Conger J.A 2007) in their article Make Your Company a Talent Factory argues
that companies have been forced to pass on hundreds of millions of dollars of new business
because they didnt have the talent with vision to see arising opportunities and develop growth
strategies to make it happen. The authors presented examples from London based construction
firm who lost the opportunities worth millions of euros because the company was dependent
upon few key talents which were already engaged in many projects, and thus ran out of resources
for deployment of people for new business. As they say The firms growth strategy hinged on
these projects, but the company had failed to groom people to lead them. (Douglas A. Ready D.
A & Conger J.A 2007).
Deploying talent by developing inside talent with in organization eases burden on key personnel
of the company and diverts the attention of talented employees towards new business
opportunities enabling business growth. This strategy is successful way of transferring and
building leadership skills of future employees. In other words succession planning for top CEOs
and executives.
30

The deployment is to ensure people are equipped with the right skills at the right moment and
connected to the appropriate resources to achieve the best results. New technologies in
information technology and advanced talent management systems makes this job easier by
locating talent where ever in the globe they are stationed and provide solution to maximize talent
utilization and empower their employees to drive corporate effectiveness more rapidly to
achieve a new level of impact on the business and success of their company.
To conclude we can say that organizations ability to develop goal-setting business strategy and
ensuring efficient collaboration and communication among employees and managers world wide
is the key to successful and strategic deployment of organizations. The aim is to gain competitive
advantage by leveraging its talent by placing right people for the right job at right location and
time is need of future success in business growth.

31

Organizational Context
Asia Petroleum limited (APL) is the owner and operator of an 80 KM furnace oil
pipeline providing Fuel oil to Pakistans largest Power plant HUBCO. Incorporated in
1995, APL is a joint venture of four firms Pakistan State Oil Company (PSO), Asia
Infrastructure Ltd of Hong Kong (AIL), VECO USA and Independent Petroleum Group
(IPG) of Kuwait. The company is based at Karachi with its head office in the city and
pumping station at Pipri 50 KM away from the city. The pumping station is equipped
with the state of the art SCADA system in the control room and having strength of
90 employees. (The organization chart is attached in appendix A). The annual turn
over of the company is 14 million approximately. The board of governors
constitutes representatives of the share holders with chairman from Asia
Infrastructure Ltd and managing director from PSO. The state owned company PSO
holds 49% shares and remaining 51% shares are owned by AIL, IPG and VECO.
Besides owners Lenders also have a representative observer in the board of
directors. The company is responsible for operations and management of the
pipeline with an annual budget of 1 million O&M cost.

The problems at Asia Petroleum Limited

The company faces reoccurring problems in retention of its key skilled workers and
engineers at the head office and pumping station.
During communications with general manager technical of APL, he showed his
growing concerns about exit of key skilled professionals leaving the organization
and joining other firms. He said people now a days do not signup job for life, their
priorities are changing, I dont blame them since every person have the right to opt
for best. The major problem is when people are leaving they are leaving along with
their subordinates and coworkers. That is a big problem for us, if an entire
department is leaving; there is something wrong with organization itself. People are
our key resources and our service heavily depends upon their availability. We need
to consider our weakness and strengths and revise our retention strategies since we
are a small organization with limited resources compared to global firms and
multinationals,

32

References:
Heskett J.L., Jones T.O., Loveman G. W., Sasser Jr W.E., Schlesinger L. A., Putting the
Service-Profit Chain to Work Harvard Business Review, Mar-Apr 1994, Pg 164 - 174

(Armstrong M, 2006) A Hand book of Human Resource Management Practice (Kogan Page
2006)
(Duttagupta R, 2005) Identifying and managing your assets: talent management Pricewaterhouse
Coopers LLP

Jeff Brown and Lindy Williams, The 21st Century Work Force: Implications for HR, in Human
Resources in the 21st Century, (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2003) edited by Marc
Effron, Robert Gandosy, and Marshall Goldsmith
Goffee R. and Jones G. 2007, Leading clever people Harvard Business Review,
June 2007
(Luecke R, 2002) Harvard Business Essentials: Guide to Hiring and Keeping the
Best People Harvard Press 2002

Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. 2001, The war for talent, Harvard Business
School Publishing, Boston.
Sartain, L. (2003). Getting Extraordinary Results from Ordinary People. In: Effron M, Gandossy
R, Goldsmith M Human Resources in the 21st Century. USA: John Wiley & Sons, INC. 3-9.
(Smith B, 1999) Topgrading In: Hiring and keeping the best. USA Harvard University
Press 2002 p12

33

(Mornell P, 1998) Hiring Smart!; In Hiring and keeping the best. USA Harvard University
Press 2002

(HILTROP J, 1999) The Quest for the Best: Human Resource Practices to Attract and
Retain
Talent European Management Journal Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 422430, 1999 Elsevier
Science

34

Chapter 8
Methodology

In the previous chapter, a literature review was conducted on the relevant research associated
with talent management concepts and process. This chapter presents the research questions and
prepositions, the operational definitions of the constructs, and the methodology and instruments
to be utilized in collection of data. The research called for both qualitative and quantitative
methods for data gathering.

The selection of research approach is linked to research philosophy. Saunders argues that
research philosophy is aimed at development of knowledge and nature of that the knowledge.
The research philosophy reflects our thinking and important assumptions about the way in which
we view the world. There are three major ways of thinking about research philosophy:
epistemology, ontology and axiology. We will briefly introduce each of these in the next
paragraphs to strengthen our understanding.

35

The research onion

Source: Saunders

Saunders defines Epistemology as representation of acceptable knowledge in the field of study.

Epistemology has two perspectives; the positivist position and Interpretivist position. Positivism
defends scientific approach to the study of social reality and develops law-like generalization
similar to those applied in the field physical and natural sciences. Positivist approach is based on
highly structured methodology to facilitate replication and generalization (Gill and Johnson,
2002) (cited in Saunders 2003). It formulates hypothesis which could be tested to answer a
question. This approach concentrates on facts and looks for causality and fundamental laws.
The role of researcher is to gather evidence; record how often occurrence of certain pattern
appears repeatedly, find relationship in data and test the theories whether

evidence from data

advocates or contradicts the theory. This leads to two main choices deduction and induction. In
Induction the data is first collected and analyzed and then theory is developed on footing of
analytics of data. Whereas in deduction the theory is first developed, and then tested on the basis
of collected data. The positivism approach requires large samples of data to form a generalized
consensus and is used to define big picture with little details. Positivism adapts deductive
approach to research and considers structured and independent data collection tools such as
structured interviews with standardized questions. Studies show that researchers adopt a mixture
of positivist and interpretivist position while conducting business and management related
research.
Van Maanen (1983), Bogdan and Taylor (1975) and Gummesson (1991) argues that although
positivism is commonly associated with a quantitative approach to data generation and
collection, qualitative techniques tend to dominate in the interpretivist approach. Quantitative
methodology utilizes the deductive logic of natural sciences. The main strengths of quantitative
techniques are that they can provide wide coverage of the range in solutions, are fast and
economical to conduct and are relevant where they are derived from large samples of data.
Furthermore quantitative data can be applied more efficiently for testing the hypotheses, but may
miss contextual detail. Researcher can remain objectively separated from the subject matter.
Whereas in qualitative data gathering researcher tends to become subjectively immersed in the
subject matter. The Researcher is the data gathering instrument. The weakness of quantitative
36

methods lies mainly in their failure to address underlying meanings. They are not very powerful
in understanding process or the significance that people attach to actions. Qualitative methods
are not helpful in generating theories and tend to be inflexible and artificial. Quantitative
methods are objective and are mostly based on surveys and questionnaires. Whereas qualitative
data is in the form of words, pictures or objects. Qualitative data is more 'rich', time consuming,
and less able to be generalized, moreover the design emerges as the study unfolds. Subjective individuals interpretation of events is important, e.g., uses participant observation, in-depth
interviews etc.
Due to these reasons we will be using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods for
data collection.

Having a research philosophy helps in building a research design that is it helps in gathering
evidence: what kind of evidence and from where. It also helps the researcher to interpret the
gathered evidence and provide answer to basic research question. (Easterby-smith 2002) argues
that having a research philosophy is very helpful in selection of a research design.

The information gained from existing research on talent management helped in identifying some
primary research questions. For instance questions on employee job satisfaction, remuneration,
work environment, motivation, career growth etc are among the related questions asked by
many surveyors and researchers in this field. Similarly researchers found in-depth interview of
line managers, executives, CEOs useful in gathering information to form a basis for analyzing
business ground reality to theoretical findings.
Yin (1994) proposed it is always a good start research design by beginning it with a statement
outlining research question and preposition if any. Our main focus of research revolves around
the following research questions for this study:

37

1. Are managers able to precisely identify the processes, skills, assets and technologies essential
to successfully implanting a talent management process in their organization?

2. What are the major areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the employees of Asia Petroleum
limited?

3. What are the employee value proposition factors for the employees of the Asia petroleum
Limited. (The most demanding element which employee values for example base pay,
healthcare benefits, share option, development or job security)
The propositions are:
a) Managers believe that talent management process is a way to get the competitive
advantage.
b) Employees understand that talent management is the responsibility of entire
members of the organization.
c) Managers and employees have clearly understood core elements of talent
management process.
d) Management has clear understanding of employee value propositions.
Once we have reached an agreement on research questions and prepositions, we will move to
next step of research methods. We have selected case study method as suggested by (Yin, 1994)
who proposes that case studies are the preferred method of investigation because it uses a vide
variety of evidence documents, arti-crafts, interviews, observations and questionnaires.
Furthermore case study provides a basis of application of findings of previously known
knowledge. Case study research is particularly useful in understanding of a complex issue or
object and extends and strengthens what is already known from the previous research. Case
studies are helpful in detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events or conditions and
38

their correlation. Case study research method can be applied to a variety of disciplines
particularly social sciences. It is mostly useful in examining contemporary real-life situations and
provides the basis for the application of ideas and extension of methods. (Yin, 1984) proposes
case study method for investigation of empirical inquiry of a contemporary phenomenon within
its real-life context; especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not
clearly evident and where there are multiple sources of evidence.

According to (May 2001) philosophical assumptions are mostly based on realism. ( Bryman &
Bell 2003) claims that reality is out there exists independently and is separate from individual
who observes it. Further to this we must understand that an individual constructs his own world
from his experiences and beliefs, and has influence on his life due to interactions with other
individuals. I am studying this research with positivism philosophical approach. Positivism is an
epistemological position that advocates the application of the methods of the natural sciences to
the study of social reality and beyond (Bryman & Bell (2003). Researcher assumes role of
Objective analyst and interpretations and separate and detached and assure that data is collected
in value free manner (Saunders et al 2003). Positivist approach is mostly based on comparisons
and experimentations, where it deduces results through specific predictions. This approach
supports questions to be derived from theory and research problem.

Limitations of the survey

The aim of my thesis has been to find what perception of talent management is carried by the
organizations in developing countries such as Pakistan especially in small to medium private
organizations. Before we analyze the data and survey results some points should be taken into
consideration. First of all the sample size is too small for such kind of survey and an opinion can
not be formed and carry strength on small sample size. It can be argued that the results are not
representative of the whole population. Also we shall bear in mind that on individual level, one
needs to account for the way some individuals state of mind at that present time. For example
when asking questions about pay, job satisfaction or organization wellbeing the respondents were
39

relaxed or were they stressed because of a busy day, work place tensions or other reasons. Each
individual employee has their own unique experiences within the company. Furthermore it would
be impossible to get employees from organization that had the same experience and felt the same
way on a given day unless the questionnaire was strictly controlled. Although, the fact that a
sample size was small could be rectified if the study was to be carried out again on a much larger
scale.

Secondly hindsight, improvements could be made to the actual questionnaire. The tick box
system, which was deemed convenient, does limit a person on the answer they can give and the
depth of hat answer i.e.: it is a closed question. Some questions did include space for employees
to justify their answers however. Possibly the phrasing of the questions could be altered to make
them more concise and tick-box option could be changed. For example Q.4 of employee survey
has a major fault.
Q.4. How long have you been working for the organization.
a. 1-2 years

b. 2-5 years

c. 5-10 years e. more than 10 years

If some person worked for 5 years he would tick option (b). 5-10 years box. This means that in
actual fact, with this mistake, there is not distinction between those two choices as he can also
choose option (c) 5-10 years. The result would become 5-10 years with the result of x no. of
employees.
Although the content of the questionnaire was limited as the pilot run showed that participants
wanted a tick box system which was quick and easy to complete. There was no option for in
depth feed back, either through the questions or conduction interviews. Nevertheless, the pilot
questionnaire should have identified these faults, which suggests that the design of the pilot
questionnaire was not of a sufficient standard. In future to avoid these significant mistakes again,

40

the pilot questionnaire should be conducted more than once to make sure every part has been
checked and double checked.
Finally, even though the questionnaires were anonymous, some participants may have
subconsciously felt that they could not answer freely; which is understandable, as some of the
questions were of slightly sensitive nature. Measures should be considered to erase this problem,
if the study was to be conducted in future. These could be rephrasing the questions as to make
them seem more general and less about the feelings towards the company or specifically asking
participants to complete the questionnaire away from the work environment, for example, at
home to give a sense of security about the answers provided.
The results could have been extended or extended further ( as a reference for a repeat of this
study) in the form of following up with face-to-face interview to ask questions about certain
answers in more depth, for example, why some individual satisfaction level as work place is not
same as compared to his former work place. Even though this would give important insight into
employees psyche and could build employee engagement to retain employees for the future, it
does pose its own problem.
For follow up interview to be conducted it would have to be known who filled out the
questionnaire, therefore not making it anonymous. One way around this would be to have the
participant complete the questions in a controlled environment and then be asked questions based
on their answers immediately after. The employee would not have to put their names on the
questionnaire but may still feel that their answers may be held against them and therefore
provide biased feedback. As well as this, there would be opportunity cost of taking employees
away from their busy work place thus disrupting companys operations and impact on finances.
In any case Asia Petroleum seems to understand Human Resources in context of talent
management and employee retention and regard it as a serious part to the success of the business.
For now more than ten years they have been successfully managing their operations and
harnessing the motivation, engagement and commitment of their employees.
Recommendation for Asia petroleum to for improvement in their employee retention and talent
management stem from the results as follows:
41

42

Survey Questionnaire
Primary data
Research shows that organizations conduct attitude and opinion surveys time to time, to identify
any areas of satisfaction or dissatisfaction and concern of the employees. These surveys are good
source of knowing overall organization climate and psychological contract of employees with the
firm. The questions addressed in survey help preparation of risk analysis. Retention plan should
propose actions that would focus on each of the areas where lack of commitment and
dissatisfaction can arise.
For the purpose of collection of primary two sets of questionnaires were prepared and distributed
to the participants. One set of questionnaire was targeted to collect primary data from the
decision making chain which includes executives, human resource manager, departmental
managers and supervisors. The other set targeted all the employees of the organization.
General survey for all employees
The main focus of this questionnaire was to find overall organizational climate from employee
lens. Secondly to find list of items that make up the elements that have a strong causal
relationship with satisfaction.
Survey questionnaire for Executives and Managers and supervisors
The aim of this questionnaire was to find out managers and supervisors understanding of core
elements and practices required for managing talent in the organization.

43

Chapter 9
Findings
Introduction
This chapter will discuss the findings of the questionnaire administered in the process of
research. The aim is to use the findings to help answer research questions. The questionnaire
submitted has two sections. First section of the questionnaire consisted of questions for all the
employees of the organization to gain information on employee perception of the organization
and their understanding about general structure and management polices of the organization as
well list of items that make up the elements that have a strong causal relationship with employee
satisfaction.
The second section of questionnaire was addressed to managers and supervisors of the
organization to find what core elements of talent management process managers and supervisors
perceive most for retention and development of talent in the organization.
Response overview
The questionnaire used in research is attached as Appendix 5-6. Section 1 of the questionnaire
will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. It was distributed to 70 employees of the
company out of which 50 filled questionnaires were received back which 71 % of the feedback
received. Section 2 of the questionnaire was distributed among 10 managers and supervisors of
the organization. 8 were received back resulting in 80% of the feedback. It should be noted that
research was confidential.
Questionnaire Findings:
The employee survey form was distributed among 50 employees. Ten of the employees were
managers or supervisors. Below is the finding of the survey from a sample size of 50 employees

44

which makes 50% of the total population of the organization. Details questionnaire is attached as
annexure 5, 6 in appendicles)
Q1. Q4. General questions about employee name, designation and length of service.
Q.5 Have you been made aware of the policies and procedures? Do you know and understand
them?
Most of the employees have the clear knowledge about the companys vision, mission and
objectives and are aware how they can achieve these objectives (72%).
Generally speaking mostly people of the organization are unaware of the vision, mission and
objectives. The company has been running a quality assurance program ISO 9000 and as part of
training of this program every employee is made aware of the vision mission and objectives of
the company. During survey I was told that employees have learned the mission statement of the
company and can reproduce it during quality survey inspection.
Q.7 What do you know about your job, and what would you like to know more about?
Most of the employees have a clear understanding about their role and responsibilities in
organization. They know their team members and customers. (85%)
This shows that employees are committed to the organization and they know their customers.
Q.8 Please rate your satisfaction with the employee benefit and policies.
About 55% of the respondents say they are satisfied with their job description, salary review and
healthcare benefits.
This is area of concern and needed to be reviewed by management.
Q.9 In next three years how effective will the following elements of compensation be in terms of
attracting and retaining.
Top priorities for employees for next three years
Job security remains the top priority of most respondents. (85%)
Second priority is base salary (60%)
Third priority is healthcare benefit (45%)
45

This result shows that people look for job security more than any thing. In Pakistan due to
uncertainty economic and political situation people are more concerned about their job than
anything else. The second priority for employees is base salary which makes up to 70% of the
gross salary. The third priority is healthcare benefits and not too many companies offer health
care benefits to their employees in Pakistan.

Q.10 Excluding financial compensation which of the following do you believe are your
organizations most effective means of rewarding motivating and retaining talent?
50% are interested in training.
10% are interested in getting training in leading edge technologies.
40% of employees are interested in overseas international opportunities?
Q.13 Overall, how satisfied are you with your companys personnel polices?
Overall 25% are extremely satisfied where as 55% are satisfied and 15% are just satisfied and
5% are unsatisfied with company policies.
Findings from survey questionnaire for Managers
Due to the small size of sample and responses received from 8 respondents we have omitted
percentages in summary of findings for managers and overall opinion was generalized in
summary.

The managers said they do not have talent specific initiative in place but they give importance
and priority in retaining critical talent in the organization. Most of the managers in the
organization identify talent by competencies. HR managers as well as departmental managers are
responsible for recruiting individuals. Retaining talent is the top priority of the organization.
Engineering, Field operations are two critical areas where retaining talent is most difficult.
Coaching, mentoring and class room workshops are utilized by organization to carry out talent
management activities. Most of the managers view organization culture as driving force for the
existing talent. The managers encourage junior engineers to gain experience by attaching junior
trainee engineers with on the job engineers and have an apprentice program in place. Job security
46

and base pay are two main areas for retaining talent in coming years. Training is found to be
playing an important role for motivation of employees in the organization. Most of the managers
expect an increase in budget for recruitment, training and development and retention of
employees.

47

Chapter 7
Summary
This chapter will provide an analysis drawn from findings with respect to and in comparison to
theoretical literature review of talent management process. The analysis is based upon the
research questions;
How should Asia Petroleum develop its talent management strategy to gain a competitive
advantage, during a phase when competition is intense and employee retention remains top
agenda of the industry?
The finding from survey validates theories and literature review on recruitment, retention,
development and deployment process. A detail analysis follows:
Selection and Recruiting Strategies
What we have found so far is that Talent Management literature is mostly related to large firms,
especially firms that are spread our continents and regions. These firms have ample resources to
conduct such research programs on finding best human resource practices and design sate of the
art processes to maintain their competitive advantage. However fundamental concepts of
attracting, hiring, retaining and deploying are equally useful for small firms. Furthermore in a
small company, each person is vital to the success of the firm. Larger organizations may be able
to afford to hire a less than ideal employee, but in a small company, one poor performer can have
devastating effects. Also larger companies have sufficient funds and large budgets for training
and development and can wait for people to get onboard over a period of time. Some large
companies even provide extensive three to four months training to their newly hired employees
before getting onboard. Therefore we make a point that talent management in small companies
should start right from selection of the right people. As we have earlier described in our literature
review that your first decision on aligning business strategy with people you hire starts right
from selecting the right person. What to look for when selecting workforce is attitude, energy,
48

passion, curiosity, compassion and independence. These characteristics can not be built from
scratch and people having these distinctive attributes can be influenced, promoted, cultivated and
developed and harnessed into excellent highflyers (Sartain, L., 2003). The selection and
recruitment is also emphasized by an article What it means to work here in Harvard Business
talent management review as great firms understand their current and future employees as
clearly as most companies understand their current and future customers. Aligning the hiring
process with business strategy will result in selection of best people whom firm will be retaining
for longer time.
Retention strategies
The literature review identified employee retention as one of the biggest challenge. The retention
strategies should address employee value propositions obtained through survey questionnaire and
risk analysis performed time to time. Retention of employees as literature review indicates is
linked to psychological contract of employees with the firms and monetary values still play a
crucial role in attracting employees to work for the organization. Therefore establishing
transparency compensation and standard monetary rewarding system can be good strategy for
retention. As Maslow (1954) explained us only when the lower needs of physical and emotional
well-being are satisfied, then we are concerned with the higher order needs of influence and
personal development. Before satisfying their basic living condition, people will not consider the
higher needs. The retention plan should also cover the future needs, expectations and demands of
the employees. Promises made but not delivered will increase dissatisfaction among employees.
People in the firm expect to grow as the firm grows. Unjustified and unqualified promotions can
alienate people who were promised growth and Promotions in future. Obliviously organizations
can not fully satisfy the need of every employee, however if merit is maintained most of the
employees will be comfortable with overall assessment of their appraisal and progress. Also, if
the opportunities for growth and advancement arent really there, pretending and proclaiming
that they are will only hurt your organization. Moreover managers play an important role in
keeping the people motivated and engaged as Cappelli (2000) says Loyalty to companies may
be disappearing but loyalty to colleagues in not. If the managers are passionate and social ties of
employees are strong people would not leave their job for few dollars. Steps to improve worklife balance and introducing policies considering flexible working hours and recognize needs of
49

employees outside work can improve retention rates. Hoffman argues that an effective manager
improves retention rates. The starting point for him is the manager mindset (Hoffman, 2007).
Training manager and team leaders in a way that they appreciate positive contribution can make
difference. As some great leaders say people often leave their managers rather than their
organization. Literature review and research on retention science suggested that leaders can
influence the retention in three ways: motivation, conversation and commitment. (Adair, 2006)
argues that leadership embraces more than motivation. Frederick Herzberg classified the
motivation element in two categories the motivator and the hygiene factor. The motivator can be
accelerated by recognition, achievement and appreciation while the hygiene element can be
overcome by improving work place conditions and developing atmosphere and conditions
around work that eliminates stress. Communication and conversation at workplace plays an
important role in overall perception of employee as a better organization to work for. People
have ambitions and expectations with their jobs. Managers as leaders can shape conversations
into relations. The stronger relationship builds stronger ties. People care for relationship more
than other things. The degree of relationship you build with customer should be equally strong
with the relationship you build with the employee. As business cares for its customers it should
also care for its employees. They are part of service-profit-chain. To exchange loyalties and
passions of employees, leader should step up and understand what employees are looking for and
expecting from the organization. Informal interactions with employees to know them and satisfy
their needs can be good strategies in talent manage.
Development and Deployment strategies

Training and development plays key role growth and development of the organizations. The
world of business requires constant development of new ideas, innovations, products, and
process and technologies to remain competitive and ahead of competitors. Organizations need to
intake new management models and methods of people management. Managing change is major
challenge for fast growing organizations. Training and development of employees can help in
developing readiness for the future needs of the organizations. (Noe, 2002) argues that training
fulfill immediate or near terms needs for acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes, whereas
development ensures acquisition of attributes or competencies for future needs. Successful
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organizations are investing increasingly in training and development of their employees. Training
and development is becoming an integral mechanism for restructuring organizations. Learning
must be identified as separate identity of the organization and staffed with people able to identify
measure and lead it. Therefore if organizations want be future ready, they should invest in
training and development as you invest in shares or stock for gaining future profits. Firms should
treat training and development cost as investment and not expense. Finally human deployment
has also emerged as a strategic issue. Putting the right person at right place ensures the
opportunities arising are not missed and the organization has best person to deal with demand of
situation. McMahan (1992) argues that strategic deployment of employee enables the firm to
achieve its goals. Therefore the development and deployment strategies need to be planned to
take benefit of present and future arising opportunities by deploying appropriate talent who can
capitalize on opportunities when even no body thought it was there.

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Chapter 9: Recommendations
The competition is on, organizations of today will transform into organizations of future, few may
live and few may die. Success comes at a cost. Those who prepare and strive will get fruits of the
future. Talent has emerged as most import force generating strategic value for the organizations. As a
leader and manager, how to recruit develop, deploy and retain high potential talent to maintain
strategic and competitive advantage is becoming a critical boardroom agenda.
We recommend following considerations for successful implementation talent management process
in Asia Petroleum Limited.
1. Assess your current and future talent gaps. A review of present workforce abilities and skills can
identify present and future talent requirements. This may prove a good starting point for beginning of
talent management process in your organization
2. Make learning and development a top priority for optimizing and meeting future needs of the
organization. Building a learning organization to ensure the transfer of knowledge and information
will eliminate risk of fading out in future.
3. Measurement improves control. As we measures profits to compare growth, we need to measure
performance of our work force. Developing human capital measurement tools and techniques will be
added advantage in judgment and decision making process. As we make use of financial analysis for
decision making for future investment, we need human capital measurement analysis for future talent
needs.
4. Place right people for the right job. Every body is different. A skilled engineering may be a good
brain, but his management skills may not be that good. Careful deployment can earn opportunities.
5. A diverse force can make difference especially in global context. Diversity generates rich cultures
in the organizations.
6. Build your human resource department on strategic grounds. Align HR policies with business
strategy to convert your human resource into talent.
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